Loe raamatut: «Greenacre Girls», lehekülg 8

CHAPTER XIV
THE LAWN FÊTE

For two weeks the little Finns remained at Greenacres, getting rosy and happy. The girls hunted up their old toys; Rika rambled around with a little red express wagon, and Maryanna hugged a big doll to her heart all day long and slept with it at night.

Up at Maple Lawn the tired mother grew steadily better, partly from Dr. Gallup's medicine, partly from Cousin Roxy's persistent infusion of hope, womanly courage, and endurance into her mind. As she grew stronger she began to help Cousin Roxy around the house, and Hiram in caring for the cows. This was odd for a woman, it seemed to Miss Robbins, but Karinya told her it was what she had always done in the homeland when she was a girl, dairy work on a farm, and she liked it best. And out of this grew a plan that Mrs. Robbins helped with. There were three good Holstein cows over at the Finnish home, and when Ella Lou took back the Mother and two kiddies, Cousin Roxana put up a business proposition to the brother and sister. They were to make butter, the very best butter they could, and Mrs. Robbins would get customers for them back at the Cove in Long Island. Homemade butter up here in the hills ranged from ten to twelve cents below the city market price, and was better in every way. So prosperity began to dawn for the little woman who had been too tired to live, and Cousin Roxana kept an eye on the upland farm all summer long, with Jean to help with the children.

After the children went home, the girls turned their attention heart and soul to the lawn party. The first thing to be sure of was a full moon. This came along the last week in June, so they made their arrangements accordingly.

The committee meeting turned out a success in every way. Saturday afternoon Mrs. Robbins and the girls set the dark green willow chairs and table under one of the pines on the lower terrace, and prepared to conquer. The three ministers arrived, each one surprised to find the other two present, but all very gracious and pleasant.

"Why, they were almost cordial before they left," Kit declared after it was over. "I think the prospect of having anyone besides Cousin Roxy make an effort for a good time inspired them. I'm to have charge of a fishpond, and Helen will sell flowers with fortunes attached to them, and Dorrie can help with the ice cream. I know that will suit her."

"I'm to be gypsy fortune teller," Jean announced. "Mother, dear, may I have your Oriental silk mantel scarf, please, and the gold bead fringe off the little boudoir lamp in your room?"

"You may have anything to help the cause along," Mrs. Robbins answered happily. "I've sent down to New York for Chinese lanterns to decorate the grounds with, and Hiram's going to play the violin for us. I'm sure it will be very sociable and just what they need up here."

Honey and Piney took almost as much interest in the affair as the girls themselves. All that day, when it finally did arrive, they worked, putting wires around the trees out on the lawn, and hanging up the many-colored lanterns. Two tents were erected, one for Jean as the gypsy, and the other for lemonade, made in two big new tubs. Helen said she had cut and squeezed lemons until her whole mouth was puckered up, and her finger nails felt pickled. Kit was everywhere at once, it seemed. She inspired the two ministers to join hands in brotherly ardor and erect long plank tables for refreshments. She showed Honey how to twist young birches together and make an inviting arch over the entrance posts at the end of each drive. She beguiled Hiram, who had come down from Maple Lawn to help around a bit, into moving the piano out on the front veranda.

"When you're tired of playing the violin for them, Mother or one of us girls will play the piano. Music sounds ever so nice at night."

It did seem as if all Gilead Center, Gilead Green, and Gilead Proper had turned out to show its neighborly spirit. There were teams hitched along the road, and teams hitched in the barnyard and the front yard and everywhere. The Chinese lanterns made the grounds look wonderfully enticing and Hiram sat up on the veranda in a kitchen chair tipped back against the wall, and played bewitchingly, so Helen said.

"I shouldn't wonder, Miss Robbins, if we had as many as a hundred folks here tonight," said Mr. Lampton.

"More likely two hundred, Mr. Lampton. It only goes to show what really lies back in our hearts and needs digging up-sociability. Bless their hearts, how I do love to see them all enjoying themselves." Cousin Roxana moved her glasses half an inch higher up on her nose and surveyed the scene. Miss Titheradge was helping Mr. Collins pass the ice cream, and the two were chatting happily together.

Up on the veranda Mrs. Robbins hovered between the Morris chair, where Mr. Robbins sat, and her various guests, welcoming each in her own charming way, and blending the different social elements together with tact and understanding.

Helen and Kit followed Jean's lead. First Jean rounded up the girls whom she had met on the drive with Piney and introduced them to the other Greenacre girls. Doris could not be located from one minute to another. She was like a firefly, bobbing around with a big orange colored Chinese lantern on the end of a long mop handle. But Helen and Kit led the other girls over to the refreshment tent and had them all don little white aprons and help serve ice cream and cake. It was much better than standing around, shy and silent, not knowing what to do next. Kit found one girl, Abby Tucker, leaning disconsolately against a pear tree at the side of the drive. Her white dress was too short for her, and her hair was cut short to her neck and tied with a bow on top very tightly. She looked lonely and rather indignant too.

"Don't you want to come over and help us with the ice cream?" asked Kit.

"No, I don't," said Abby flatly. "They always ask me to help pass things to eat at the church suppers. I want to have a good time myself tonight. Though we aren't going to have a good time."

Kit looked at her doubtfully. She thoroughly realized the state of mind that will not let itself be happy, that in fact, finds its happiness in being unhappy, but Abby's moroseness baffled her.

"Don't you like it here?" she asked.

Abby nodded.

"Don't you know anyone?"

"Know most of them. My father's a blacksmith and they all come over to get shod."

"Then what is it?" Kit laid her arm around the stooped shoulders and at the touch of real human sympathy, Abby's reserve melted.

"My new shoes pinch awful," she exploded.

Kit never stayed upon the order of her going. She took her straight up to the house to her own room, and ransacked closets and shoe boxes until she found a pair of low shoes to fit Abby, and the latter came down again smiling and radiant, ready to serve ice cream, or make herself agreeable in any way she could.

Piney came up to the veranda where Mrs. Robbins sat, personally conducting her mother to meet her. She was a tall, fair-haired woman with deep dimples, like the children's, and a happy face. Seated in a willow rocker on the veranda with the roses and honeysuckle shedding a perfume around, she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Seems so nice to sit up here again, Mrs. Robbins," she said. "Piney's told me all about how you've fixed the place up till it seemed as if I couldn't wait to see it. I used to drive over once in a while after Father died, and get some slips of flowering quince and rose bushes to set out. You know I love every blade of grass in the garden and every pine cone on those trees."

"It's too bad you and the children could not have had it."

"Well, I don't know. I never fret much over what has to be. Maybe this boy Ralph is all right. He's my nephew, but I've never seen him. His father was a claim settler out in Oregon first off, when Cousin France married him. We called her that. Her name was Francelia. Good stock, I guess. I wish Honey could know him, he's so set on being a rancher. I suppose settling and ranching's about the same thing?"

"Not quite," Mrs. Robbins told her. Then came a chat about her own father's ranch in California, and when Piney came back after her mother, she found her all animated and interested over Honey's future.

Kit and Etoile were arranging a dancing class for alternate Saturday afternoons, the ones between to be given up to lawn tennis and basket ball. Ingeborg and Astrid and Hedda Hagerstrom stood listening and agreeing with shining eyes and eager faces, but silent shy tongues. Hedda was short and strong looking, with the bluest eyes possible and heavy blond braids. She stared at Kit with wide-eyed wonder, Kit, radiant and joyous in her prettiest summery dress, with sprays of flowering almond around her head like a pink blossomy crown.

"You'll come, won't you, Hedda?" she asked. "And bring any other girls over your way."

"There's only Abby over my way. We live on the same road."

"Then bring Abby, but tell her to wear old shoes. We ought to find enough girls to make up a good team out here."

"Do you like hikes?" asked Sally Peckham. "I think it would be fun to have a hike club, and each week tramp away off somewhere. There's ever so many places I want to see."

"It's a good idea, Sally," Piney exclaimed. "First rate. We could call ourselves the Pere-pere-what's that word that means meandering around, Jean, don't you now?"

"Peregrinating?"

"That's it. Peregrinating Gileadites."

"I think 'Greenacre Hikers' would be better," said Ingeborg. "I'd love to go along, wouldn't you, 'Trid?"

Astrid was sure she would. So while Hiram played "Good-night, Ladies," and the three ministers smiled and shook hands together and with their hostess and host, the girls of Gilead planned their first campaign for summer outings.

It was after twelve before the last team had driven away. Hiram and Kit went around with a couple of chairs, mounting them to reach the lanterns and blow out the candles inside. Doris was found sound asleep in the library on the couch. Jean and Helen hunted in the grass for lost spoons and ice cream saucers.

"How much do you suppose we made?" asked Mrs. Robbins. "I'm so proud of it, I had to tell our executive committee. Forty-five dollars and thirty-five cents. Isn't that good for Gilead?"

"Good land alive!" Cousin Roxana exclaimed, her shoulders shaking with laughter. "I didn't suppose you could ever find so much money around loose in Gilead. They're all of them tighter'n the bark to a tree. I do believe, Betty, they paid ten cents admission to the grounds just to see what you all looked like."

"I don't care if they did," Jean said happily. "We got acquainted with all our neighbors, and now I feel as if I could go ahead and organize something."

CHAPTER XV
KIT PULLS ANCHOR

The following Saturday had been set as the first day for the girls to meet at Greenacres. Sally was the first to arrive, as she lived nearest, and she brought with her Anne and Charlotte, who, in a process known in large families, had become Nan and Carlie.

Hedda and the two girls from the old Ames place, Ingeborg and Astrid, arrived together and helped Kit and Helen plan the tennis court. Below the terraces the lawn lay smooth and even out to the south wall, but it had been decided to sacrifice a slice of the hay field across the road rather than the garden, and Hiram had ploughed up a good sized oblong of land for them, harrowed it smooth, and then the girls had pondered over the problem of rolling it. It must be rolled flat, wet down, and rolled again until it was fit to use.

"We could fill a barrel with sand, and roll that," Doris suggested, thoughtfully.

"Got something better than that," Honey said. "Over at Mr. Peckham's they've got a road roller. Mr. Peckham's the road committee in Gilead township-"

Kit caught him up,

"The whole committee, Honey?"

"Ain't he enough? Ought to see him get out and clean up with those boys of his. He'll let us take it, I'm sure, and it will roll that court down as smooth as can be. I'll go after it this afternoon when I finish with the potato patch."

"Don't I wish we had the old garden hose," Helen said, after they had carried buckets of water from the well unremittingly for nearly an hour, and emptied them on the harrowed patch. "I'm half dead."

"Cheer up, sister mine," Kit told her briskly. "Think of the result. 'Finis coronat opus!' From dawn till dewy eve we will play out here."

"We've got a croquet set down at the house, but the boys are always using the mallets to pound something over at the mill, and the balls get lost. I like this best." Sally stood with arms on her hips, smiling happily. "What else are you going to do up here?"

"Next we're going to start weekly hikes," Kit told her. "You girls have lived here for years, haven't you-"

"We just came up a while ago," Ingeborg corrected.

"I know, and so did Hedda, but Etoile and Tony and Sally and the rest of you all grew right here, didn't you? Well, then. What do you know about the country for ten miles around?" Kit paused dramatically. "Do you know every wood road and cow path through the woods? Do ye ken each mountain peak and distant vale? Where does Little River rise? Have any of you followed the rock ledge up into the hills?"

"Nobody but the hunters go there, and they don't come till fall," said Hedda gravely. She hardly ever smiled, this transplanted little daughter of far-off Iceland. Her manner and expression always seemed to the girls to hold a certain aloofness. Up at her home, later on, they saw a finely carved model of a viking ship which her father had made back in the home island, and Jean declared after that she always pictured Hedda standing at its high prow, facing the gale of the northern seas, her fair hair blowing behind her like a golden pennant, her blue eyes fearless and eager.

"But we'll go. With something to eat and trusty staves. That makes me think, girls, we haven't seen many snakes. Aren't there any up here, Sally?"

"Lots. But mostly black snakes. They're ugly to look at, but they don't hurt you. And little garter snakes, and green grass snakes. I never think about them."

"Are you afraid of anything out here, Sally?" Doris asked, interestedly. She had eyed Sally admiringly from the first moment of their acquaintance, and privately Dorrie held many fears. It was all very well to say there wasn't anything to worry over, as Kit did; but one may step on toads in the dark, or hear noises in the garret that make one shiver even if they do turn out to be just chipmunks after corn and huts.

"Nothing that I know of," Sally replied serenely. "I never felt afraid in the dark. Just as soon go all over the house, up stairs and down, and into the cellar, as not. And I go all over the barn and garden at night. Guess the only thing I'm really afraid of is a bat."

"Everybody's afraid of something," Etoile said, her eyes wide with mystery. "I have the fear too, oh, but often. I am most afraid of those little mulberry worms, you know them? They come right down at you on little ropes they make all by themselves, and they curl up in the air and then they drop on you. Ugh!"

Kit fairly rolled with delight at this, over on the grass.

"How perfectly lovely," she laughed. "Tell some more, Etoile."

"We've got a haunted house on our road," Astrid said in a lowered voice. "The little spring house between the old mill and our place. It's been there years and years, my father says. He knows the old man at the mill, and he told him. As far back as they can remember it has always been haunted. First there lived an old watchmaker there. He had clocks and watches all over the house, and they ticked all the time."

"Maybe they kept him from being lonely," Helen suggested.

"He was very strange, and when he died, then two old Indian women came to live there. And there was a peddler used to go through and put up over night there, and he never was seen any more."

"You can see the grave in the cellar where they buried him," Ingeborg whispered. "Right down at the foot of the stairs. And at night he comes up and goes all around the house, rattling chains. Yes, he does. My brother went down with some of the boys and stayed there just to find out and they heard him."

"Let's go over there on our hike and stay over night, girls," Kit exclaimed. "I think it would be dandy."

"Don't you believe in ghosts, Kit?" asked Sally. "I don't like to believe in them, but I just thought they had to be believed in if they're really so."

"Remember in Dickens's 'Christmas Carol,'" Jean joined in, "hew old Scrooge insisted that he didn't believe in ghosts even when the ghost sat right beside him, and rattled his chains?"

"Oh, don't, Jeanie," Doris begged, arms close around the big sister's neck. "Don't talk about it."

"We'll stay over night at the spring house, girls," Kit promised happily. "It's a shame to have a real ghost around and not make it welcome. If there are any ghosts they must be the lonesomest creatures in all creation because nobody wants them around. Suppose we say that next Friday we'll walk up to the house and camp out for the night. Who's afraid?"

The girls looked at each other doubtfully.

"Can I bring our dog along?" asked Ingeborg. "Then I am not afraid, I don't think."

"Bring anything you like. I'm going to take an electric flashlight. Here comes our roller, now. We'd better finish the tennis court."

That night the girls talked it over themselves up in Jean's room. It was always the favorite council hour, when all the queen's hand-maidens combed their silken tresses, as Helen said.

Somehow it did seem as if you could think clearer and weigh matters better, after you were undressed, with a nightgown and kimono on, sitting cross-legged on the bed or couch. Mrs. Robbins always stopped on her way to bed to look in at either one room or the other, and chat for a while. She listened with an amused smile to the story Ingeborg had told.

"The fear of the dark, they say, comes from away back in the first dawn of the world," she said. "It is the old dread of the unknown the cave man felt when darkness fell over the land and wild beasts prowled near. But this other idea about the ghost is queer, isn't it, girls? Do you really want to stay over night there?"

"I think we'd better, Mother dear," Jean answered comfortably, "We'll be the warrior maidens, and slay the dragon Fear which hath most wickedly enthralled our fair land. That's a nice little house, and everyone's afraid to live in it."

"Ingeborg told me after you girls came up to the house, that there was one door in the sitting-room nobody could keep shut. It swung open all the time."

"Never mind, Helen," Kit said. "I'll take it off its hinges, and cart it right down cellar. Then I guess it will behave itself."

Cousin Roxana told the story of the old spring house when they saw her. She could remember Scotty McDougal, the old watchmaker who had lived there.

"Land, yes, I should say I could. He used to wear an old coonskin cap with the tail hanging down, and carried an old gun along with him wherever he went. After he died, two old women moved in from somewhere in the woods towards Dayville. They were Injun, I guess, or gypsy, real good-hearted folks so far as I could see. Used to weave carpet and rag rugs and make baskets. There was a story around that they could tell fortunes and see things in the future, but that's just talk. I never pay any attention to such things at all. The Lord never has seen fit to let His way be known excepting through His own messengers. Probably, if you could clear the house of its name, somebody'd be willing to live in it. It belongs to Judge Ellis."

"Who's Judge Ellis?" asked Kit, who always caught at a new name.

"Who is he?" Cousin Roxy laughed heartily. "Meanest man in seven counties, I guess. He ran for Senator years ago, and was beaten, and he took a solemn oath he'd never have anything to do with anybody in this township again, and I guess he's kept it. He lives in the biggest house here."

"All alone?" asked Doris.

"All alone excepting for a housekeeper and his grandson. He's just a fussy old miser, and the way he lets that boy run wild makes my heart ache."

"How old a boy is he, Roxy?" asked Mrs. Robbins, quick sympathy shining from her eyes.

"Oh, I should say about fifteen. Name's Billie. He's a case, I tell you. What he can't think of in five minutes isn't worth doing. Still, he's a good boy too, at that. Five of my cows strayed off from the pasture lot last summer and he found them after Hiram had run his legs off looking for them. And once we lost some turkeys, and he found them over in the pines roosting with the crows. He knows every foot of land for ten miles around here and more, I guess. You never know when he's going to bob out of the bushes and grin at you. The Judge don't pay any more attention to him than if he was a scarecrow. Seems that he had one son, Finley Ellis, and he was wild and the Judge turned him off years ago. And one day he got a letter, so Mr. Ricketts told me, from New York, and away he went, looking cross enough to chew tacks. When he came back he had Billie with him, and that's all Gilead ever found out. Billie says he's his grandfather, and the Judge says nothing."

"I'd like to see him," Jean exclaimed.

"Who? The Judge?"

"No, no. Billie, this boy. What does he look like?"

"Looks like all-get-out half the time, and never comes to church at all. You'll know him by his whistling. He can whistle like a bird. I've heard him sometimes in the early spring, and you couldn't tell his whistle from a real whip-poor-will. There is something about him that everybody likes."

"I hope he comes over this way," Mrs. Robbins said.

"Oh, he will. The Judge never lets him have any pocket money, so he's always trying to earn a little. He'll come and try to sell you a tame crow, most likely, or a trained caterpillar. I was driving over towards their place one day and I declare if I didn't find him lying flat in the middle of the road. Ella Lou stopped short and I asked him what he was doing. 'Don't drive in the middle of the road, Miss Robbins,' he said, ''cause I've got some ants here, taming them.' Real good looking boy he is too."

"My, but he sounds interesting," Kit remarked fervently. "I almost feel like hunting him up; don't you, Jean?"

Jean nodded her head. She was putting up currants and raspberries, and the day was very warm.

"Why do you keep a fire going in the house?" Miss Robbins asked her. "Put an old stove out in the back-yard, the way I do, and let it sizzle along. Good-bye, everybody. I hear all the ministers are still speaking to each other."

"Come down and play tennis with us," called Helen.

"Go 'long, child." Cousin Roxy chuckled. "How would I look hopping around like a katydid, slapping at those little balls! Get up there, Ella Lou."

"Well," Kit exclaimed, as the buggy drove away, "it seems as if every single day something new happens here, and we thought it would be so dull we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves."

"You mean Billie's something new?" asked Helen.

"Doesn't he sound interesting? I'm going out to ask Honey about him."

"You'd better help me finish these berries, Kathleen," Jean urged. So Kit gave up the quest temporarily, and sat on the edge of the kitchen table, stripping currants from their stems, and singing at the top of her clear young lungs:

 
"'Oh, where have you been, Billie Boy, Billie Boy,
Where have you been, charming Billie?'
'I've been to seek a wife, she's the comfort of my life,'
But she's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother.'
 
 
"'Did she bid you come in, Billie Boy, Billie Boy,
Did she bid you come, charming Billie?'
'Yes, she bid me come in, with a dimple in her chin,
But she's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother.'
 
 
"'Did she offer you a chair, Billie Boy, Billie Boy,
Did she offer you a chair, charming Billie?'
'Yes, she offered me a chair, with the ringlets in her hair,
But she's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.'
 
 
"'Can she make a cherry pie, Billie Boy, Billie Boy-'"
 

"Oh, Kit, do stop," begged Jean. "It's too hot to sing."

Kit looked out at the widespread view of Greenacres, rich with the uncut grass, billowing with every vagrant breeze, like distant waves. It was hot in the kitchen, hot and close.

"I'll bet he'd let her stay right in the kitchen keeling pots and making cherry pies, too," she said suddenly.

"Who?"

"Who?" wrathfully. "All the Billies of the world. They can ramble fields and whistle like whip-poor-wills, but we've just got to stay and make cherry pies forever and ever, amen."

"Why, Kit, dear-"

"Don't 'dear' me. I want to get out and tramp and live in a tent. I hate cooking. I don't see why anybody wants to eat this kind of weather. I'd nibble grass first."

"Yes, you would," laughed Helen. "You'll be the first at supper to lean over sweetly and ask for preserves and cake. I see you nibbling grass, Miss Nebuchanezzar."

But Kit had fled, out the back door and over to the pasture where Princess rambled.

"Kit's fretful, isn't she?"

"She's pulling on her anchor," answered Jean. "We all do. Some days I get really homesick for the girls back home and everything that we haven't got here, – the library and the art galleries and the lectures and the musicales and everything. I think we ought to write down and ask some of the girls to come up."

"I don't. Not until Dad's well."

Doris was out of hearing. Jean looked over at Helen, who in some way always seemed nearer her own age than Kit.

"Helen, honest and truly, do you think Dad's getting any better?" she asked in a low voice.

Helen hesitated, her face showing plainly how she dreaded acknowledging even to herself the possibility of his not improving.

"He eats better now, and he can sit up."

"But he looks awful. It fairly makes my heart ache to look at him sometimes. His eyes look as if they were gazing away off at some land we couldn't see."

"Jean Robbins, how can you say that?"

"Hush. Don't let Mother hear," cautioned Jean anxiously. "I had to tell somebody. I think of it all the time."

"Well, don't think of it. That's like sticking pins in a wax statue back in the Middle Ages, and saying, 'He's going to die, he's going to die,' all the time. He's getting better."

Jean was silent. She felt worried, but if Helen refused to listen to her, there was nobody left except Cousin Roxy. Somehow, at every emergency Cousin Roxy seemed to be the one hope these days, unfailing and unfearing. Dauntless and cheerful, she rode over every obstacle like some old warrior who had elected to rid the world of dragons.

But when Jean found an opportunity of speaking to her of her father, Cousin Roxana's face looked oddly passive.

"We're all in the Lord's hands, Jeanie," she said. "Trust and obey, you know. There are lots worse things than passing over Jordan, but we've just got that notion in our heads that we don't want to let any of our beloved ones take the voyage. Jerry's weak, I know, and he ain't mending so fast as I'd hoped for, but he's gained. That's something. You've been up here only a couple of months. It took years of overwork to break him down, and it may take years of peace and rest to build him up. Let's be patient. Dr. Gallup seems to think he's got a good deal more than a running chance."

Jean wound eager, loving arms around the plump figure, and laid her head down on Cousin Roxy's shoulder.

"You dear," she exclaimed. "You're the best angel in a gingham apron I ever saw. I feel a hundred times better now. I can go back and work."

"Well, so do, child, and comfort your mother. Hope springs eternal, you know, in the human breast, but it takes a sight of watering just the same to make it perk up."